ITPers Explore Manchester!

The ITP team is enjoying its second day in Manchester with fellows Joyee Roy (ITP 2011, India), Rika Nortjé (ITP 2007, South Africa), Saadu Rashid (ITP 2012, Kenya) and Waed Awesat (ITP 2014, Palestine).

Yesterday, we had a fantastic historical tour of the city with journalist, historian and Blue Badge guide Jonathan Schofield, visiting the sights and learning about Manchester’s industrial history, including the cotton trade, the Peterloo Massacre and the Manchester bees!

Today, we visited two ITP UK partner museums: Manchester Art Gallery and the People’s History Museum.

At Manchester Art Gallery, Ronan Brindley (Head of Learning) – along with Clare Gannaway (Contemporary Art Curator) – showed us how the gallery display combines and creates dialogue between historic and contemporary artworks, and told us about the New North South network, bringing together cultural organisations in the north of England and South Asia.

We explored the various temporary exhibitions on display as part of the New North South programming: the South Asian Design gallery, and solo presentations of artists Neha Choksi, Waqas Khan, Mehreen Murtaza, Hetain Patel, Risham Syed and Tentative Collective (whose visa refusal letters are on display – the reason that their performance has been postponed).

Over at the People’s History Museum, we met with Adam Jaffer (Collections Officer, and formerly with Birmingham Museums), who discussed with us his museum’s unique position as a national museum dealing with radical politics.

We had an amazing tour of the museum’s conservation studio, where the conservation specialists were working on some of the large collection of painted textile banners. The studio has a viewing window, on which the team also write updates to inform the public on their work.

The colourful and interactive display at the museum is impressive, and interpretative text employs the Ekarv Method.

We can’t wait to continue our exploration of Manchester tomorrow!